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Pastor Ed Pruitt
Are You Sure You Are Ready To See God?
Part 2
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Isaiah 6:1-13 (NLT)
6 It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple.
2 Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.
3 They were calling out to each other,
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Heaven’s Armies!
The whole earth is filled with his glory!”
4 Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.
5 Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.
7 He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”
8 Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?”
I said, “Here I am. Send me.”
9 And he said, “Yes, go, and say to this people,
‘Listen carefully, but do not understand.
Watch closely, but learn nothing.’
10 Harden the hearts of these people.
Plug their ears and shut their eyes.
That way, they will not see with their eyes,
nor hear with their ears,
nor understand with their hearts
and turn to me for healing.”
Greek version reads starting with verse 9, And he said, “Go and say to this people, ‘When you hear what I say, you will not understand. When you see what I do, you will not comprehend.’ For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes— so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.”
Compare Matt 13:14-15; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; Acts 28:26-27.
Matthew 13:13-17
13 That is why I use these parables,
For they look, but they don’t really see.
They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand.
14 This fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah that says,
‘When you hear what I say, you will not nderstand.
When you see what I do, you will not comprehend.
15 For the hearts of these people are hardened,
and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand,
and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’
16 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.
17 I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it. And they longed to hear what you hear, but they didn’t hear it.
Mark 4:12 (NLT)
12 so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled:
‘When they see what I do, they will learn nothing.
When they hear what I say, they will not understand.
Otherwise, they will turn to me and be forgiven.’ ”
Luke 8:10 (NLT)
10 He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables to teach the others so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled:
‘When they look, they won’t really see.
When they hear, they won’t understand.’
Acts 28:25-27 (NLT)
25 And after they had argued back and forth among themselves, they left with this final word from Paul: “The Holy Spirit was right when he said to your ancestors through Isaiah the prophet,
26 ‘Go and say to this people: When you hear what I say, you will not understand.
When you see what I do, you will not comprehend.
27 For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes so their eyes cannot see,
and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’
I just wanted to add the Greek because it seems to explain verses 9 & 10 a little better.
11 Then I said, “Lord, how long will this go on?”
And he replied, “Until their towns are empty,
their houses are deserted,
and the whole country is a wasteland;
12 until the LORD has sent everyone away,
and the entire land of Israel lies deserted.
13 If even a tenth—a remnant—survive,
it will be invaded again and burned.
But as a terebinth or oak tree leaves a stump when it is cut down, so Israel’s stump will be a holy seed.”
Last week we spoke on two points from this great text.
The first was that before it is anything else, worship is being freshly impacted by God’s throne.
Isaiah’s experience doesn’t have a cuddly bone in it.
It is stretching and stunning with God’s authority - His right to rule everything.
Nothing is allowed to compete with the rule of God.
Isaiah’s assignment from that throne is anything but pleasant.
There is not a bone in Isaiah’s body that is naturally inclined to obey.
But that’s all irrelevant.
Isaiah knows instantly his own wishes don’t even enter the picture.
That’s why God’s throne is described in stark simplicity as being “high and lifted up”.
The second point we studied was the need for diligence in worship.
In verses 2-4 we noted the repetition of the expressions of these angelic beings.
They called out to each other.
They are unceasing in their dismantling of pride as they cover their faces.
This is so important.
Because our natural love for place and independence never totally fades we must continuously and deliberately bow before this throne of God.
Once and a while won’t cut it.
In this whole text - just as their worship is again described in John Revelation - there is never any stopping point in their corporate worship.
Today we consider points three and four from this text:
SCRIPTURAL WORSHIP IS A PURIFYING AGENT IN OUR LIVES
This whole process is described in graphic terms.
And the terms are graphic because there is no gentle path to a clean life.
Isaiah can’t reform himself.
He can’t grow out of this uncleanness.
Isaiah 6:5-7 (NLT)
5 Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.”
Isaiah was God’s man before he had this experience, but it still had a tremendous effect on him.
The reaction of Isaiah to such a vision is revolutionary.
He sees himself as he really is in the presence of God—undone.
It reveals to him his condition.
When he had seen God, he could see himself.
The problem with many of us today is that we don’t walk in the light of the Word of God.
If we did, we would see ourselves.
That is what John is talking about in the first chapter of his first epistle: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth [keeps on cleansing] us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
If we walk in the light of His Word, we are going to see exactly what Isaiah saw—that we are undone and men of unclean lips.
You have never really seen the Lord, my friend, if you feel that you are worthy, or merit something, or have some claim upon God.
Job had an experience similar to Isaiah’s, and his reaction was “I abhor myself.” Job was a self-righteous man. He could maintain his integrity in the presence of his friends who were attempting to tear him to bits. They told him that he was a rotten sinner, but he looked them straight in the eye and said, “As far as I know, I am a righteous man.” From his viewpoint he was right, and he won the match against them. But he was not perfect.
When Job came into the presence of God, he no longer wanted to talk about maintaining his righteousness. When Job really saw who he was, he said, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6).
If you walk in the light of the Word of God, you will see yourself, and you will know that even as a child of God you need the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse you from all sin.
You will find that other men had the same reaction when they came into the presence of God. John, on the Isle of Patmos, wrote, “And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead …” (Rev. 1:17). When Daniel saw the Lord, he said, “Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength” (Dan. 10:8). That was also the experience of Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the apostle. After Paul met the Lord, he no longer saw himself as a self-righteous Pharisee, but as a lost sinner in need of salvation. He then could say, “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (Phil. 3:7). He saw his need of Jesus Christ.
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.
This “live coal” has come from the burnt altar where sin had been dealt with.
In the next chapter we will see the prediction of the birth of Christ, but it is not the incarnation of Christ that saves us, it is His death upon the cross.
For this reason, Isaiah needs the live coal from off the burnt altar, which is symbolic of Christ’s death.
This living coal represents the cleansing blood of Christ that keeps on cleansing us from all sin.
7 He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”
Isaiah is a man of unclean lips, and the condition for cleansing is confession: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
I believe it would be more accurate to say that this glowing coal is symbolic of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
He was the One high and lifted up on the throne, and He was the One lifted up on the cross.
It is absolutely essential that He be lifted up, because He came down to this earth and became one of us that He might become “… the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
And so the lips of this man Isaiah are cleansed.
I take it that this act of putting the coal on his lips was just an external manifestation of what happened in the inner man.
It is what proceeds out of the heart of a man that goes through the lips; and, when the lips are cleansed, it means that the heart is cleansed also.
There was a man in the New Testament who also was “undone.” His name was Paul, and he cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24).
When Paul said this, he was not a lost sinner but a saint of God, learning the lesson from God that he needed to walk in the Spirit because he could not live for God by himself.
Living for God can only be accomplished by divine grace.
Man’s responsibility is to confess his sinfulness and his inability to please God.
Therefore, we need to have the redemption of Christ applied to our lives again, and again, and again.
I think it’s important to point out the obvious.
Isaiah is no spiritual slouch.
He’s a holy man, he’s a divinely called, genuine prophet of Almighty God.
However the term “prophet” gets lightly tossed about today, there are no prophets like Isaiah in today’s world.
God used Isaiah to write a book of the Bible.
But for all of that, and because of all that, I love what we read next.
Isaiah felt keenly unworthy before God.
The text says, in Isaiah’s own, carefully chosen words, he felt unclean.
That means, he felt dirty before God.
Can you relate to that?
There should be the constant awareness of not having arrived yet in terms of my pursuit of my upward call in Christ.
A constant dependence would be another way of describing it.
I think there is a sense in which I should still feel incomplete in terms of all that God has for me.
There should still be a holy restlessness in my pursuit of God.
I take this also from Paul’s words in
Philippians 3:12 (NLT)
Pressing toward the Goal
12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.
If you’re like Paul, or Isaiah, you constantly find the need for fresh cleansing in your life.
You want fresh grace.
You want God’s work to go deeper.
You find your hunger for deliverance from every trace of sin turning into an obsession the longer you follow the Lord.
And this is intimately tied to the cry and passion of your worship.
Here’s what I see in this passage from Isaiah:
Draw near to God.
Focus on His throne - His rule - His holy Kingship - persist in mindful, passionate worship.
And here’s what should happen almost automatically.
God will be faithful to make you aware of the points of need in your life.
This simply has to happen.
It’s only natural that the closer I get to the light of God’s blazing holiness and purity, the more the light of His very Being will illumine the stains and spots on my heart.
And here’s the beautiful side of this whole truth.
He doesn’t show these things to His worshiping children to destroy them.
He reveals these things to deliver them.
That’s always the beautiful surprise of God’s purifying presence.
Worship is tied to power and cleansing.
It’s not just a divine, mystical nap.
Spiritual work gets done. This is almost surprising.
What would you think a red hot, burning coal placed on your lips should do?
It should burn and destroy tissue.
You would think that experience would ruin you.
But that is never the case with God’s work in our lives.
Just at the very point you see yourself at your worst, just at the point where nothing of your own craftiness remains as an excuse between a Holy God and your ugly sin,
Right at that point of greatest awareness of need,
wholeness and restoration and healing comes.
Learn this lesson about worship earlier rather than later.
When you’re in His Presence, don’t resist His exposure of your sin.
Don’t fight tears of remorse or regret.
Don’t hold back or pretend.
Worship and honesty can join hands.
You can open up before this King.
He’s there to free you. He’s there to restore you.
Don’t shy away from the work He wants to do.
Why did the angelic being touch Isaiah’s lips?
Was there nothing but perfection in every other part of his being?
No. Rather, God went to work at the point of Isaiah’s confession.
Where we come clean, where we allow God to do His best work in our worship focusing on His throne, that’s where the miracles begin.
THROUGH WORSHIP COMES FRESH FIRE FOR MINISTRY
Isaiah 6:8 (NLT)
8 Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?”
I said, “Here I am. Send me.”
It is interesting that up to this time Isaiah had never heard the call of God.
I think many Christians have never felt like they were called to do anything for God because they have never been cleansed.
They have not seen this great need as Christians.
God is not going to use a dirty vessel, I can assure you of that.
It is true that God does bless His Word even when it is given out by those who are playing around with sin, but in time God judges them severely.
Isaiah heard God’s call: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
I don’t need to call attention to the fact that you have both the singular and the plural in this verse, and I believe it sets forth the Trinity.
Isaiah’s response was, “Here am I; send me.”
Isaiah heard God’s call for the first time and responded to it, as a cleansed individual will do.
There are too many people today who are asked to do something in the church who first of all ought to get cleansed and straightened out with the Lord.
They need to have their lips touched with a living coal.
They need to confess the sins in their lives, because their service will be sterile and frustrating until that takes place.
Where does the strength for your ministry come from?
What is it that fuels service for the Lord?
Of course, there needs to be knowledge and understanding.
Paul talks about the uselessness of faith and zeal that isn’t accompanied by understanding.
Then, there needs to be training.
Anything you and I do for the Lord should be sharpened by the best efforts we can produce and the best experience we can glean from others.
There is also a measure of practice needed.
Whether you preach, usher, sing, or play, you will improve as you use the ability God gives you.
Many people drop out of ministry, never staying with it long enough to find freedom in what they do, simply because they never try long enough to develop a fluency in what God has called them to do.
It’s not that they weren’t called. They simply quit too soon.
But there is something else on top of all these ingredients.
You need to come to the throne of God.
Repeatedly. With diligence.
With the fellowship of other worshipers.
You need to have Him do something to revive and cleanse your soul.
Notice how passive Isaiah is in this text.
All he does is come to the throne and confess all that he isn’t.
God and His angels do everything else.
If there is one thing I’ve proven over and over in times of stress and sheer fatigue in my own ministry it is this, worship quickens ministry.
It has nothing to do with an emotional tickle or a good time that by-passes discipline and knowledge.
But worship does add God’s fire to everything else we bring of our own preparation before the Lord.
We all know life can be demanding.
Spiritual life even more so.
We mustn’t glamorize this text.
But the plain fact of this text is God was calling Isaiah to the last thing in the world Isaiah wanted to do.
Sometimes God still does that.
You won’t always respond favorably to His call without the preparation and cleansing of your heart in worship.
Worship gets you ready for God’s call.
Isaiah needed this vision of God because God wasn’t calling him to evangelism of the lost.
Read the last part of the chapter.
God was calling Isaiah to pronounce judgement - irreversible judgement - on His people.
Nobody will embrace that call unless he hears it clearly coming from a throne.
But the lesson is still precious.
Whatever God calls you to do, worship prepares you for doing it.
This places the context of Biblical worship on a totally different footing.
It really isn’t about feeling blessed, though there are times of great blessing and refreshing.
Worship is more about establishing availability before God.
First, if you remember last week’s teaching, worship reveals the throne of God.
Then, after that throne is revealed, worship creates a heart that bows before that throne.
Stay before the throne of God.
Maintaining a posture of worship isn’t a charismatic thing.
It’s a Bible thing. It’s a God thing.
Set your heart on honoring the King.
Let worship bathe your being in the sovereign Will of God the Father.
He will give you the strength for whatever task He calls you to.
